Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy最新文献

{"title":"Public, private, or in between? Institutional isomorphism and the legal entities in Swedish and Finnish higher education","authors":"J. Holmén, Johanna Ringarp","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2155348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2155348","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the past few centuries, an accelerating process of legalization and classification have moulded the diverse range of earlier institutions into a limited number of isomorphic organizational forms. Today, institutions of higher education, with their roots in the corporate forms of medieval universities, can also have the legal status of, for example, government agencies, associations under public law, foundations, and joint stock companies. This article investigates the types of legal entities Swedish and Finnish institutions of higher education have been organized into in the period from the 1990s until 2020, and why these particular types have been chosen. It also explores how the special characteristics, aims, and demands of the university have caused adaptations to organizational forms such as joint stock companies and foundations. Comparative studies benefit from investigating societies that are as similar to each other as possible, making it easier to identify and isolate the effects of the factors that actually differ. In this respect, Finland and Sweden are ideal for comparative studies. Both Swedish and Finnish institutions of higher education have experienced coercive, mimetic, normative, and managerial-professional isomorphic pressure. However, there are important pre-existing national differences, such as the greater reliance on public agencies in Sweden and the multiplicity of semi-private legal entities in Finland, most significantly the associations under public law. These differences made the transition of universities into independent legal entities seem natural in Finland in 2009, while it was too radical in the Swedish context.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"9 1","pages":"57 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47531323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evidence through the lens of bibliometrics—the case of Finnish higher education admission reform","authors":"Joni Forsell, V. Mankki","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2149099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2149099","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A major admissions reform was carried out in Finnish higher education at the end of the last decade. This paper focuses on three main policy papers connected to the reform and examines the use and production of evidence therein. Drawing on bibliometric research and research on educational policy, we aim to provide insight into how to utilize citation analysis when examining evidence in educational policymaking. In the three policy papers, domestic legislature was cited the most frequently, and research from higher education institutions was cited the least. Affirmational citations were the most prominent; perfunctory, assumptive, conceptual, persuasive, contrastive, and negational citations were found to a lesser extent. When cross-examined in relation to citation types, sources were mostly cited as affirmational, with the exception of research from higher education institutions, which was cited as conceptual information. We also found that the writers cited their own previously written ministry-affiliated policy brief as central information in one of the policy papers connected to the reform. Our study is in line with the earlier literature showing that certain sources, such as domestic publications, are favoured over others. It also illustrates the different citation strategies experts employ to substantiate and legitimize educational policymaking.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"9 1","pages":"75 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43594292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inclusion in the light of competing educational ideals: Swedish Policy approaches to differentiation and their implications for inclusive education","authors":"David Paulsrud","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2083053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2083053","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Teachers and schools face multiple demands regarding how they should respond to student diversity. Thus, it is crucial to study these different demands in order to understand how they shape inclusive education in practice. Following this line of reasoning, this article presents an analysis of Swedish educational policy documents, which shows that differentiation policies are constructed as answers to different educational problems, and that these problems are framed by different ideals and assumptions about education. Five different policy approaches to differentiation are described and discussed in relation to the ideal of inclusive education. By studying the Swedish case, the article illuminates how different policy approaches can interact over time within the context of an educational system. The policy approaches can thus be understood as ideal types that can be used in analyses of other educational systems. Implications for inclusive education in Swedish schools are addressed in the article by discussing the conditions for schools’ and teachers’ enactments of the conflicting policy demands.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"171 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42640886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Silence, resistance, and acceptance? An analysis of early childhood education and care policy in Norway","authors":"Tora Korsvold, Mette Nygård","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2148406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2148406","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The main purpose of this article is to explore and develop a basic understanding of a new formulation of children’s learning within ECEC policies in Norway. In the Nordic Countries, one question of importance is the shift in ECEC policy from a social-pedagogical approach and a holistic perspective on children’s learning towards a heavier emphasis on school readiness, mathematics, and linguistic skills. And it is this latter approach which is our topic here. The research question is as follows: What transformations can be identified in learning discourses in the Norwegian government’s White papers? Analysing political reports will help us identify discourses, including the power and resistance of the ECEC professionals. For this purpose, Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis model is an appropriate way to analyse dynamic processes of recontextualization and reconceptualization. His analysis includes three levels: social structure, social practices and social events, with the aim being to discover how the existing order of discourse is being reproduced or reconstructed. Further, the concept of interdiscursivity describes how texts draw on previous and existing discourses. The article identifies movements and complexity both in policies and among professionals. The learning discourses are strongly influenced by New Public Management in the way of individualization, assessment and accountability. There are signs of silence and acceptance, but resistance and countermovements are also present in the field of ECEC.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"225 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42086755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Constellation of trajectories and fast policy worlds: A spatiotemporal reading of experts’ positions and social encounters in Finland’s and Norway’s recent curriculum reforms","authors":"Saija Volmari","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2151105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2151105","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As evidence has become the predominant requirement for decision-making on policy in modern democracies, the importance of experts has increased tremendously. Education reforms are no exception. International organizations have gained power globally in national education policy and politics, particularly through the data they produce and the policy discourses they advocate. However, nationally appointed experts participate in the production of these discourses and advocate for policy ideas in their national context. This article examines the interplay of national and international through a spatiotemporal reading of eleven interviews with experts involved in Finland’s and Norway’s recent curriculum reforms. In their social encounters, experts exchange knowledge that does not show up in the written recommendations for reform but influences their content and focus. The author identifies three positions of experts as translators of policy knowledge that reflect the complexity of education policymaking processes which are rooted nationally, but increasingly influenced by international power structures and transnational social encounters. The author asserts that international organizations derive power not only from the data they produce but the meeting places they facilitate. Who is invited is partly a matter of geopolitics. However, the most exclusive places might only open for those ´at the forefront´ of education reforms.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"184 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44681861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reforming higher education through national curriculum regulations: the case of Norwegian kindergarten teacher education","authors":"S. Borgund","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2115214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2115214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Reform in higher education is on the agenda worldwide, and there is increasing political interest in the content of study programmes. This article looks at the policy process leading to the new national curriculum regulation (NCR) for kindergarten teacher education (KTE) in Norway in 2012. The following questions derived from Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Theory (MST) will be posed to analyze the policy process: Who were the actors present in each of the different streams in the policy process leading to enacting a new NCR for KTE in 2012? What kind of opportunities for influence did the actors have in deciding to structure the KTE in interdisciplinary knowledge areas, and to what extent did these actors play roles as policy entrepreneurs? The data material consists of policy documents, consultation letters, and an online debate forum. The findings show that three policy windows, each representing different opportunities for impact for the participating actors, were opened during the process. Even if the process can be described as transparent and having a high degree of participation, the Ministry effectively structured it by setting rules and conditions. Nevertheless, one actor managed to take on a role as a policy entrepreneur early in the process.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"196 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48454545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The mechanisms by which external school evaluation in Iceland influences internal evaluation and school professionals’ practices","authors":"B. Ólafsdóttir, J. Jónasson, A. Sigurðardóttir, T. Aspelund","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2076376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2076376","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The main purpose of this research is to analyse school principals’ and teachers’ attitudes towards external school evaluation in Iceland, in particular, the ways in which they consider the evaluation affects their schools’ internal evaluation and drives changes in their own practices. The study uses a quantitative method and is based on a survey conducted among principals and teachers in 22 schools that were externally evaluated during the years 2013 to 2015. The results indicate a positive attitude towards external school evaluation among both teachers and principals. Acceptance, setting expectations, and teacher participation were found to be significant predictors of perceived changes in internal evaluation in the teachers’ data. However, only acceptance significantly explained perceived changes in teaching practices. In the principals’ data, the only variable that had a significant association with perceived changes in internal evaluation was setting expectations, and only acceptance had a significant association with perceived changes in leadership practices. In accordance with the hypothesis of this study, the results underpin the importance of acceptance of the evaluation feedback and setting expectations through quality standards. However, contrary to the hypothesis, external stakeholder involvement did not prove to be a strong determinant of change as perceived by principals.","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"209 - 224"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45484843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Intimate Accounts of Education Policy Research: The Practice of Methods","authors":"A. Kokko","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2116156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2116156","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"146 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45001319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Opening the black box of editors’ work","authors":"Paananen Maiju, Pitkänen Hannele","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2116850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2116850","url":null,"abstract":"This issue consists of four peer-reviewed articles, and two nonreviewed texts: a book review and a discussion paper. The publication of any text in a journal takes part in the knowledge production in multiple ways. Firstly, in research, the selection of the topic is inherently political in nature: What are the topics that are brought to the fore and how? The topics of the articles published in this issue, digitalization, teacher autonomy in highstakes and low-stakes accountability governance models, public–private partnerships in education and reforms related to educare of school-age children reflect the changing context of education policy in the Nordic countries. The changing education policy context compels researchers to acknowledge the complexity of power relations and governance in teachers’, students’ and children’s lives. Secondly, the peer review process that is an essential part of scholarly discussion both adds to, and is part of, the knowledge-making process, and this collaborative work between authors, reviewers and editors has epistemic consequences beyond a particular publication. Therefore, discussing the nature and principles of the publication process, including peer review and editorial work, is vital for the whole field of education policy research. This editorial will focus on this topic, epistemic power of publication process. Before diving into this topic, we will introduce the four articles of this issue. In the first article of this issue, Marita Ljungqvist and Anders Sonesson examine the discourses related to the digitalization of education. They ask what the values embedded in the argumentation promoting the acceleration of digitalization in education are. They demonstrate how policy argumentation related to digitalization is characterized by a reductionist neoliberal framing of education. In this discourse, students are represented as entrepreneurial citizens with a moral obligation to renew human capital by adapting to market demands. The educational system is constructed as a flexible and automated infrastructure in which teaching is framed as ‘facilitating’. In the second article, Ana Lucia Lennert da Silva examines teacher autonomy in different models of educational governance. The author uses quantitative data from the OECD TALIS 2018 to compare experienced autonomy of teachers in countries with a highstakes accountability governance model and countries with a low-stakes accountability model. In addition, the author uses qualitative interview data from a study on teacher autonomy conducted in Norway and Brazil. Here, the argument is that teachers perceive that they have good control over teaching and planning at the classroom level, regardless of the model. The responses might reflect the views of what is considered possible – autonomy horizons are different depending on the context. The teachers also report that they experience low social value and low policy influence, which raises questions concerning what we m","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"85 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44592159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The educated, deliberative citizen: constituents for a normative model","authors":"T. Englund","doi":"10.1080/20020317.2022.2116152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2022.2116152","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to make further use of and develop the idea of deliberative communication (Englund, 2000a, 2000b, 2005, 2006a, 2010, 2015, 2016) as crucial for creating sustainable democratic societies and educated citizens living educationally (cf. Englund, 2019). The more specific and demarcated aim is to present a scaffold of concepts and grounds supporting the development of an education of deliberative citizens. The overall context and reason for further working on the idea of deliberation is the still strong development and diffusion of the idea designated as ‘the deliberative turn in democratic theory’ (Dryzek, 2000, p. 1). There are many advocates that could be referred to concerning this deliberative turn. In US, James Bohman and William Rehg (Bohman, 1996; Bohman & Rehg, 1997) are two among many others. Amy Gutmann (1987), Gutmann & Thompson (2004)) and Nussbaum 1997, 1999, 2010) and in Europe Jürgen Habermas is central. What also might be stressed here is that both Gutmann and Nussbaum are among them who have introduced the deliberative perspective on schools and education (for a short review of deliberative communication and the deliberative perspective on education see Englund, 2000a, 2000b/2005). In my earlier work on deliberation (Englund, 2000a, 2000b) the starting point has often been John Dewey’s Democracy and Education (Dewey, 1916/1985) and his assertion that deliberative education is characterized by mutual, free and open communication within and between groups. Add to that Habermas’ validity claims and his placing of communication and deliberation in a wider context. Habermas places the realization of deliberative policy and decisions in the institutionalization of procedures, where an intersubjectivity on a higher level is expected to emerge; public discourses find a good response only under circumstances of broad participation (Dewey, 1927/1988). This in turn ‘requires a background political culture that is egalitarian, divested of all educational privileges, and thoroughly intellectual’ (Habermas, 1996/1998, p. 490). So, the basic theoretical framework uses ideas from classic and modern pragmatism (Dewey, 1916/1985, 1927/1988, Jürgen Habermas, 1981/1987, 1983/1992, 1985/1990, cf. Englund, 2006a, 2006b, 2010, 2016). In the following, I will, in three sections, make an attempt to deepen and transform the idea of deliberation to a normative model of the educated, deliberative citizen by stressing some visionary thoughts of how to learn to live educationally. But first a general argumentation for the normative model by Seyla (Benhabib, 1996), the perhaps most well known of deliberative theorists of today, for the need of developing ideas and building normative models, arguing that","PeriodicalId":52346,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy","volume":"8 1","pages":"149 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48247163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}